How to win your next advocacy campaign
Written by Niki Juhasz
Imagine it. A meeting with your favorite colleagues. Perhaps a white board. Colorful Post-its everywhere. And brainstorming. Lots and lots of brainstorming.
You’ve just walked into my happy place: the very first stages of planning a powerful advocacy campaign. When planning a campaign, one of the most important steps is ensuring you’re focused on the people who can...you know. Actually make your vision a reality.
Powermapping 101
So how do you make sure you’re targeting the right people? Friend, let me introduce you to a classic concept called powermapping. Organizations have been successfully using this tested tool for years!
Powermapping is a great visual exercise that you can use to identify who you need to target with your communications—and who can help you influence their decisions, too. It goes like this:
Get a group together who knows this topic well. It could be your executive director, policy team, and anyone else in your organization who is working on this topic (and obviously your communications team).
Together, make a list of who can move the needle on your campaign. Who are the decision makers who can make your dream a reality? Who has the power to say yes or no? Who influences them? That may mean your school board of education members, if you’re campaigning about your district’s budget, your city council members to enact a new law, or even national-level representatives if you’re working on initiatives that span the country.
Then, make a chart with four sections. At Forthright, we categorize them like this:
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When possible, we like to do this on a giant whiteboard with Post-its. There are many online tools that give you the same feel, such as Jamboardl! We’re using Google Presentations in our example below.
4. Once you’ve categorized who is most powerful in this campaign, brainstorm about how you can best reach them. Ask questions such as:
What’s important to them?
Who can influence them?
Why may they support or oppose this campaign?
You’ve just created the foundation for your campaign!
So...Sounds Cool, But I’d Love an Example
I’m so glad you asked. Let’s say you’re running a campaign to get funding for school-based mental health supports into your state budgets. You may need to consider your state legislators, who make decisions about district budgets, powerful superintendents who can advocate at a state level, nonprofit partners and more.
Your brainstorming may look something like this:
Once you’ve completed your brainstorming, it’s time to create a plan based on these target audiences!
I started by telling you powermapping is my happy place—and I was telling the truth. When you start with strong, targeted strategies, you’re more likely to succeed. And when you succeed, so do children and families.
Now you go get 'em.
P.S. We have a free resource to help you build strong target audience personas, too.
